Chapter 16

ON our way back I received from the runner some explanation of
his apparently unaccountable proceedings in reference to myself.

To begin at the beginning, it turned out that the first act of
the officers, on their release from the workroom in the red-brick
house, was to institute a careful search for papers in the
doctor's study and bedroom. Among the other documents that he had
not had time to destroy, was a letter to him from Alicia, which
they took from one of the pockets of his dressing-gown. Finding,
from the report of the men who had followed the gig, that he had
distanced all pursuit, and having therefore no direct clew to his
whereabout, they had been obliged to hunt after him in various
directions, on pure speculation. Alicia's letter to her father
gave the address of the house at Crickgelly; and to this the
runner repaired, on the chance of intercepting or discovering any
communications which the doctor might make to his daughter, Screw
being taken with the officer to identify the young lady. After
leaving the last coach, they posted to within a mile of
Crickgelly, and then walked into the village, in order to excite
no special attention, should the doctor be lurking in the
neighborhood. The runner had tried ineffectually to gain
admission as a visitor at Zion Place. After having the door shut
on him, he and Screw had watched the house and village, and had
seen me approach Number Two. Their suspicions were directly
excited.

Thus far, Screw had not recognized, nor even observed me; but he
immediately identified me by my voice, while I was parleying with
the stupid servant at the door. The runner, hearing who I was,
reasonably enough concluded that I must be the recognized medium
of communication between the doctor and his daughter, especially
when he found that I was admitted, instantly after calling, past
the servant, to some one inside the house.

Leaving Screw on the watch, he went to the inn, discovered
himself privately to the landlord, and made sure (in more ways
than one, as I conjectured) of knowing when, and in what
direction, I should leave Crickgelly. On finding that I was to
leave it the next morning, with Alicia and Mrs. Baggs, he
immediately suspected that I was charged with the duty of taking
the daughter to, or near, the place chosen for the father's
retreat; and had therefore abstained from interfering prematurely
with my movements. Knowing whither we were bound in the cart, he
had ridden after us, well out of sight, with his countryman's
disguise ready for use in the saddle-bags-- Screw, in case of any
mistakes or mystifications, being left behind on the watch at
Crickgelly.

The possibility that I might be running away with Alicia had
suggested itself to him; but he dismissed it as improbable, first
when he saw that Mrs. Baggs accompanied us, and again, when, on
nearing Scotland, he found that we did not take the road to
Gretna Green. He acknowledged, in conclusion, that he should have
followed us to Edinburgh, or even to the Continent itself, on the
chance of our leading him to the doctor's retreat, but for the
servant girl at the inn, who had listened outside the door while
our brief marriage ceremony was proceeding, and from whom, with
great trouble and delay, he had extracted all the information he
required. A further loss of half an hour's time had occurred
while he was getting the necessary help to assist him, in the
event of my resisting, or trying to give him the slip, in making
me a prisoner. These small facts accounted for the hour's respite
we had enjoyed at the inn, and terminated the runner's narrative
of his own proceedings.

On arriving at our destination I was, of course, immediately
taken to the jail.

Alicia, by my advice, engaged a modest lodging in a suburb of
Barkingham. In the days of the red-brick house, she had seldom
been seen in the town, and she was not at all known by sight in
the suburb. We arranged that she was to visit me as often as the
authorities would let her. She had no companion, and wanted none.
Mrs. Baggs, who had never forgiven the rebuke administered to her
at the starting-point of our journey, left us at the close of it.
Her leave-taking was dignified and pathetic. She kindly informed
Alicia that she wished her well, though she could not
conscientiously look upon her as a lawful married woman; and she
begged me (in case I got off), the next time I met with a
respectable person who was kind to me, to profit by remembering
my past errors, and to treat my next benefactress with more
confidence than I had treated her.

My first business in the prison was to write to Mr. Batterbury.

I had a magnificent ease to present to him, this time. Although I
believed myself, and had succeeded in persuading Alicia, that I
was sure of being recommended to mercy, it was not the less the
fact that I was charged with an offense still punishable by
death, in the then barbarous state of the law. I delicately
stated just enough of my case to make one thing clear to the mind
of Mr. Batterbury. My affectionate sister's interest in the
contingent reversion was now ( unless Lady Malkinshaw perversely
and suddenly expired) actually threatened by the Gallows!

While calmly awaiting the answer, I was by no means without
subjects to occupy my attention when Alicia was not at the
prison. There was my fellow-workman--Mill--(the first member of
our society betrayed by Screw) to compare notes with; and there
was a certain prisoner who had been transported, and who had some
very important and interesting particulars to communicate,
relative to life and its chances in our felon-settlements at the
Antipodes. I talked a great deal with this man; for I felt that
his experience might be of the greatest possible benefit to me.

Mr. Batterbury's answer was speedy, short, and punctual. I had
shattered his nervous system forever, he wrote, but had only
stimulated his devotion to my family, and his Christian readiness
to look pityingly on my transgressions. He had engaged the leader
of the circuit to defend me; and he would have come to see me,
but for Mrs. Batterbury; who had implored him not to expose
himself to agitation. Of Lady Malkinshaw the letter said nothing;
but I afterward discovered that she was then at Cheltenham,
drinking the waters and playing whist in the rudest health and
spirits.

It is a bold thing to say, but nothing will ever persuade me that
Society has not a sneaking kindness for a Rogue.

For example, my father never had half the attention shown to him
in his own house, which was shown to me in my prison. I have seen
High Sheriffs in the great world, whom my father went to see,
give him two fingers--the High Sheriff of Barkinghamshire came to
see me, and shook hands cordially. Nobody ever wanted my father's
autograph--dozens of people asked for mine. Nobody ever put my
father's portrait in the frontispiece of a magazine, or described
his personal appearance and manners with anxious elaboration, in
the large type of a great newspaper--I enjoyed both those honors.
Three official individuals politely begged me to be sure and make
complaints if my position was not perfectly comfortable. No
official individual ever troubled his head whether my father was
comfortable or not. When the day of my trial came, the court was
thronged by my lovely countrywomen, who stood up panting in the
crowd and crushing their beautiful dresses, rather than miss the
pleasure of seeing the dear Rogue in the dock. When my father
once stood on the lecturer's rostrum, and delivered his excellent
discourse, called "Medical Hints to Maids and Mothers on Tight
Lacing and Teething," the benches were left empty by the
ungrateful women of England, who were not in the slightest degree
anxious to feast their eyes on the sight of a learned adviser and
respectable man. If these facts led to one inevitable conclusion,
it is not my fault. We Rogues are the spoiled children of
Society. We may not be openly acknowledged as Pets, but we all
know, by pleasant experience, that we are treated like them.

The trial was deeply affecting. My defense --or rather my
barrister's--was the simple truth. It was impossible to overthrow
the facts against us; so we honestly owned that I got into the
scrape through love for Alicia. My counsel turned this to the
best possible sentimental account. He cried; the ladies cried;
the jury cried; the judge cried; and Mr. Batterbury, who had
desperately come to see the trial, and know the worst, sobbed
with such prominent vehemence, that I believe him, to this day,
to have greatly influenced the verdict. I was strongly
recommended to mercy and got off with fourteen years'
transportation. The unfortunate Mill, who was tried after me,
with a mere dry-eyed barrister to defend him, was hanged.

POSTSCRIPT.

WITH the record of my sentence of transportation, my life as a
Rogue ends, and my existence as a respectable man begins. I am
sorry to say anything which may disturb popular delusions on the
subject of poetical justice, but this is strictly the truth.

My first anxiety was about my wife's future.

Mr. Batterbury gave me no chance of asking his advice after the
trial. The moment sentence had been pronounced, he allowed
himself to be helped out of court in a melancholy state of
prostration, and the next morning he left for London. I suspect
he was afraid to face me, and nervously impatient, besides, to
tell Annabella that he had saved the legacy again by another
alarming sacrifice. My father and mother, to whom I had written
on the subject of Alicia, were no more to be depended on than Mr.
Batterbury. My father, in answering my letter, told me that he
conscientiously believed he had done enough in forgiving me for
throwing away an excellent education, and disgracing a
respectable name. He added that he had not allowed my letter for
my mother to reach her, out of pitying regard for her broken
health and spirits; and he ended by telling me (what was perhaps
very true) that the wife of such a son as I had been, had no
claim upon her father-in-law's protection and help. There was an
end, then, of any hope of finding resources for Alicia among the
members of my own family.

The next thing was to discover a means of providing for her
without assistance. I had formed a project for this, after
meditating over my conversations with the returned transport in
Barkingham jail, and I had taken a reliable opinion on the
chances of successfully executing my design from the solicitor
who had prepared my defense.

Alicia herself was so earnestly in favor of assisting in my
experiment, that she declared she would prefer death to its
abandonment. Accordingly, the necessary preliminaries were
arranged; and, when we parted, it was some mitigation of our
grief to know that there was a time appointed for meeting again.
Alicia was to lodge with a distant relative of her mother's in a
suburb of London; was to concert measures with this relative on
the best method of turning her jewels into money; and was to
follow her convict husband to the Antipodes, under a feigned
name, in six months' time.

If my family had not abandoned me, I need not have thus left her
to help herself. As it was, I had no choice. One consolation
supported me at parting--she was in no danger of persecution from
her father. A second letter from him had arrived at Crickgelly,
and had been forwarded to the address I had left for it. It was
dated Hamburg, and briefly told her to remain at Crickgelly, and
expect fresh instructions, explanations, and a supply of money,
as soon as he had settled the important business matters which
had taken him abroad. His daughter answered the letter, telling
him of her marriage, and giving him an address at a post-office
to write to, if he chose to reply to her communication. There the
matter rested.

What was I to do on my side? Nothing but establish a reputation
for mild behavior. I began to manufacture a character for myself
for the first days of our voyage out in the convict-ship; and I
landed at the penal settlement with the reputation of being the
meekest and most biddable of felonious mankind.

After a short probationary experience of such low convict
employments as lime-burning and road-mending, I was advanced to
occupations more in harmony with my education. Whatever I did, I
never neglected the first great obligation of making myself
agreeable and amusing to everybody. My social reputation as a
good fellow began to stand as high at one end of the world as
ever it stood at the other. The months passed more quickly than I
had dared to hope. The expiration of my first year of
transportation was approaching, and already pleasant hints of my
being soon assigned to private service began to reach my ears.
This was the first of the many ends I was now working for; and
the next pleasant realization of my hopes that I had to expect,
was the arrival of Alicia.

She came, a month later than I had anticipated; safe and
blooming, with five hundred pounds as the produce of her jewels,
and with the old Crickgelly alias (changed from Miss to Mrs.
Giles), to prevent any suspicions of the connection between us.

Her story (concocted by me before I left England) was, that she
was a widow lady, who had come to settle in Australia, and make
the most of
her little property in the New World. One of the first things
Mrs. Giles wanted was necessarily a trustworthy servant, and she
had to make her choice of one among the convicts of good
character, to be assigned to private service. Being one of that
honorable body myself at the time, it is needless to say that I
was the fortunate man on whom Mrs. Giles's choice fell. The first
situation I got in Australia was as servant to my own wife.

Alicia made a very indulgent mistress.

If she had been mischievously inclined, she might, by application
to a magistrate, have had me flogged or set to work in chains on
the roads, whenever I became idle or insubordinate, which
happened occasionally. But instead of complaining, the kind
creature kissed and made much of her footman by stealth, after
his day's work. She allowed him no female followers, and only
employed one woman-servant occasionally, who was both old and
ugly. The name of the footman was Dear in private, and Francis in
company; and when the widowed mistress, upstairs, refused
eligible offers of marriage (which was pretty often), the favored
domestic in the kitchen was always informed of it, and asked,
with the sweetest humility, if he approved of the proceeding.

Not to dwell on this anomalous period of my existence, let me say
briefly that my new position with my wife was of the greatest
advantage in enabling me to direct in secret the profitable uses
to which her little fortune was put.

We began in this way with an excellent speculation in
cattle--buying them for shillings and selling them for pounds.
With the profits thus obtained, we next tried our hands at
houses--first buying in a small way, then boldly building, and
letting again and selling to great advantage. While these
speculations were in progress, my behavior in my wife's service
was so exemplary, and she gave me so excellent a character when
the usual official inquiries were instituted, that I soon got the
next privilege accorded to persons in my situation--a
ticket-of-leave. By the time this had been again exchanged for a
conditional pardon (which allowed me to go about where I pleased
in Australia, and to trade in my own name like any unconvicted
merchant) our house-property had increased enormously, our land
had been sold for public buildings, and we had shares in the
famous Emancipist's Bank, which produced quite a little income of
themselves.

There was now no need to keep the mask on any longer.

I went through the superfluous ceremony of a second marriage with
Alicia; took stores in the city; built a villa in the country;
and here I am at this present moment of writing, a convict
aristocrat--a prosperous, wealthy, highly respectable mercantile
man, with two years of my sentence of transportation still to
expire. I have a barouche and two bay horses, a coachman and page
in neat liveries, three charming children, and a French
governess, a boudoir and lady's-maid for my wife. She is as
handsome as ever, but getting a little fat. So am I, as a worthy
friend remarked when I recently appeared holding the plate, at
our last charity sermon.

What would my surviving relatives and associates in England say,
if they could see me now? I have heard of them at different times
and through various channels. Lady Malkinshaw, after living to
the verge of a hundred, and surviving all sorts of accidents,
died quietly one afternoon, in her chair, with an empty dish
before her, and without giving the slightest notice to anybody.
Mr. Batterbury, having sacrificed so much to his wife's
reversion, profited nothing by its falling in at last. His
quarrels with my amiable sister--which took their rise from his
interested charities toward me--ended in producing a separation.
And, far from saving anything by Annabella's inheritance of her
pin-money, he had a positive loss to put up with, in the shape of
some hundreds extracted yearly from his income, as alimony to his
uncongenial wife. He is said to make use of shocking language
whenever my name is mentioned, and to wish that he had been
carried off by the yellow fever before he ever set eyes on the
Softly family.

My father has retired from practice. He and my mother have gone
to live in the country, near the mansion of the only marquis with
whom my father was actually and personally acquainted in his
professional days. The marquis asks him to dinner once a year,
and leaves a card for my mother before he returns to town for the
season. A portrait of Lady Malkinshaw hangs in the dining-room.
In this way, my parents are ending their days contentedly. I can
honestly say that I am glad to hear it.

Doctor Dulcifer, when I last heard of him, was editing a
newspaper in America. Old File, who shared his flight, still
shares his fortunes, being publisher of his newspaper. Young File
resumed coining operations in London; and, having braved his fate
a second time, threaded his way, in due course, up to the steps
of the scaffold. Screw carries on the profitable trade of
informer, in London. The dismal disappearance of Mill I have
already recorded.

So much on the subject of my relatives and associates. On the
subject of myself, I might still write on at considerable length.
But while the libelous title of "A ROGUE'S LIFE" stares me in the
face at the top of the page, how can I, as a rich and reputable
man, be expected to communicate any further autobiographical
particulars, in this place, to a discerning public of readers?
No, no, my friends! I am no longer interesting--I am only
respectable like yourselves. It is time to say "Good-by."